In the original Advance Wars, the final battle against Sturm is considered very difficult compared to the rest of the game, especially if you want to S-Rank. The Advanced Campaign version of "Kanbei's Error?" transforms a rather easy level into one that's borderline impossible to beat unless you follow a very specific set of steps.

Advance Wars 2 has TWO That One Boss maps: the giant missile launcher and the Black Hole factory in Blue Moon. Augh. Augh. Augh. Augh. AUUUUUUGH.

It gets worse. "Sinking Feeling", the final mission in Green Earth, and any mission against Sturm are magnitudes harder.

Hardest mission of all in Advance Wars 2? "Liberation" Hard Campaign. Sure let's give the AI a machine that spams free bombers and neotanks without giving the player any time to prepare.

Days of Ruin/Dark Conflict has several including the tower mission, both missions where you're being bombed by the Great Owl, the mission ON the Great Owl, and the final mission to players who only ever get by by spamming war tanks and bombers.

The mission ON the Great Owl is an interesting case. Its very easy, once you know what to expect and move to counter it. The first time through, you have NO idea that no less than THREE waves of reinforcements are gonna pop, reinforcements that include things like Rocket Launchers and Light Tanks, coming from BOTH sides of the map.

And the final mission in Days of Ruin is about three times harder than any other mission in the entire series if you don't use a day-by-day walkthrough. Your enemy gets to crank two free units of whatever he wants every day, laser beams that fire everywhere, two mortar launchers that fire daily at a group of your units, and the ability to turn one of his own units into a superunit that makes all other units in a radius super-powered as well and heals them 50% of their HP every turn. Most players, if they concentrate solely on the objective, can take out four of the mission targets before the enemy starts completely annihilating them and preventing them from reaching the last target.

"Waylon Flies Again", notoriously, can't have a day-by-day guide - Waylon's AI is impossible to map out. You have a fucking mountain range between you and Waylon's forces, he starts out with a substantial property-and-unit advantage, and while Tasha brings in a nice arrangement of anti-air, it's blunted by how you lose if she's wiped out. Being able to take control of and flood the middle area of the map with your own units will tilt the odds in your favor, but it's an uphill struggle.

Battalion Wars is quite easy up to one level. It's where you have to defend a beach, very much like beachhead. You have limited troops, four mounted machine guns (more useless, when you get to the flamethrower rounds), two artillery, and one heavy recon. The first two waves are relatively easy. Wave one is foot troops. Wave two is foot troops AND tanks. Simple. The enemy then freaks out and another person joins the fight. The enemy air general. Who joins up with the enemy foot person with bombers and rocket troops. Your general's suggestion? ONE AA VEHICLE. ONE. Did your friendly vehicles suck up all of the vehicle health kits? Yes? Prepare to be sent back to the mission failed screen in about 2 minutes.

Except that part of the mission can be made ridiculously easy. Just mass your infantry around the northeast bunker, and manually control the AA Vehicle and position yourself inbetween the north bunkers. Enjoy massacring the air units coming from the north. Let me guess: you lose quite a few units during the first two parts? Guess what? 100% Technique on that missions requires no losses whatsoever.

Dual Strike has a level where you're trying to destroy one of those crystal things, only this time it's the last one and it's huge. Let's set up the scenario, shall we? You start off with three different bases, none of which are near each other AND are on opposite sides of two streches of pipeline and a patch of Sea. Remember those strange Ooze entities Black Hole built to protect the large crystal? Yeah, there are at least two of them. There's also a great big cannon at the top of the map that fires at any unit that crosses into its cone-shaped firing area. Not to mention the Kill Sat that fires every five turns after its reveal, and you have to commandeer missile silos to take it down. If Black Hole takes any of these silos, you lose. Period. Then there's the fact that the crystal in the center of the map keeps healing their units, and they keep coming at you with more and more powerful stuff because they control most of the cities on the map. Unfair? YES.

The 'Surrounded!' Mission isn't too much of a problem on Normal, but it quickly becomes the hardest mission in the campaign on Hard Mode. Not only do you have smaller bases than before, but the enemy has a much larger one than your 2 bases combined. And while the mission has a Turn Limit of 24, you will often die around Day 4 when the enemy decides to use their Tag Power, which is a huge problem because they get to use Andy. Even using CO's with Capture+ Skills (as this is a capture based mission) wont help you, as the AI will randomly do something that makes the mission impossible to win.

Other Games

X-COM's Chrysalids weren't technically bosses, but the missions that include them as enemies almost all count as a That One Boss situation. Especially Snakemen terror missions. Chryssalids have 110 action points, which is usually more than double the action points your soldiers have. they have enormously high Energy and above-average stats all around, especially Strength 110 (when your soldiers will be lucky to have 40). They are all heavily armored and with enough health to shrug off gunfire and, if lucky enough, missiles to the face. They have an incredibly fast melee attack. And every soldier killed by a Chrysalid becomes a zombie, WHICH WHEN KILLED BECOMES ANOTHER CHRYSALID. So most engagements with Chrysalids are either "spot a Chrysalid a hundred meters away, see it run up to you in a single turn, see it bite the heads off two or three of your dudes in the same turn and they all turn into hostile zombies which even if killed will then turn into more Chrysalids", or "suddenly hear the noise a soldier makes when he's killed by a Chryalid, and notice one of them managed to sneak up from behind your squad and kill everyone". What's most irritating is that they show up relatively early but are on par with the 2 other nastiest aliens in the game, and the missions they show up on you have to take or pretty much lose the game. Some very succesful players, once they learn that Chryssalid enemies are present on the map, often prefer to just level everything with missiles, grenades and high explosives while ignoring civilian casualties, rather than hunting down the little abominations one by one. Some players go as far as carrying primed grenades in their packs if Chryssalids are lurking about.

In XCOM: Enemy Unknown, the Chryssalids are back and just as deadly, to the point that between them and Muton Elites, Chryssalids are the bigger threat, particularly on higher difficulties. This is because they violate the usual rules of the game. In cover for safety? Hahahah NO. Elevated? No dice. Assault sent forward? Hope he has insurance. Only Snipers are ever REALLY safe from them. As attached as you might be to your guys, if you've got a Heavy in range when a soldier gets his throat ripped out by a Chryssalid, your fallen trooper might just get a Viking funeral to prevent having to deal with another zombie or Chryssalid.

The expansion, Enemy Within, turns Sectopods into these. How? Halve all damage to them (and effectively double Drone's healing) thanks to Reinforced Armor, nerf the counter to them; HEAT ammor from 100% to 50%, all whilst keeping the same traits that made them an absolute bitch to deal with. If you dally in the endgame for too long, tuck your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbye as you deal with FOUR of them.

The sequel lives up to the reputation of pain by buffing every old enemy type (Sectoids are tougher, Mutons are smarter and are now an example of Kung-Fu Proof Mook, Floaters become Archons, Thin Men become Vipers, etc.) and introducing some new types of enemies, all of whom are happy to help you fill your memorial wall with pictures.

The Chryssalids no longer create zombies!! HOORAY!! They now turn victims into cocoons that spawn THREE of them, with one popping out every turn. Did you just lose a soldier of civvy to these things? Kill 'em fast AND their cocoons, before you die to the Zerg Rush.

Floaters went and had makeovers, becoming the rather angelic Archons. How are they worse? Take the Floater, give it a cover-wrecking Macross Missile Massacre, give it a buff when it gets hurt, buff its health (20 compared to a Sectopod's 30), and tack in a high defense score (25).

Sectopods are back. Bluescreen Rounds makes mincemeat of them, sure, but that's a saving grace considering their high accuracy, ludicrous hack defense (meaning trying to disable them might just BUFF them), high armor of 5 (meaning -5 to all damage received, barring Psionics, explosives and shreds), and Wrath Cannon; an Ao E attack with massive range and width that straight up deletes everything it hits. Can't kill the Sectopod whilst Wrath Cannon is charging? Hope you like Code Blacks!!

If you still think it's not hard enough, don't worry. The Alien Hunters and Shen's Last Gift DLC adds more pain to the sequel.

Alien Hunters adds the Ruler Aliens, in order: Subject Gamma: Viper King, Subject Beta: Berserker Queen, and Subject Alpha: Archon King. Take what made their base species bad, turn it Up to Eleven, give them MASSIVE HP (50, 75, & 100 on Normal respectively), and tack in a dose of The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard in the form of Ruler Reactions, which give them free moves per XCOM action. Not turn. Action. As in so much as reloading will give them a free shot at your troops. The Viper King now spits frost, the Berserker Queen now has a Ao E that can disorient, stun or knock a soldier unconscious, and the Archon King can now pull off a Spinning Piledriver on your troops from 5 stories up, on top of his Macross Missile Massacre following Ruler Reaction rules, meaning only one soldier can avoid it, unless everyone has grapples.

Shen's Last Gift only adds one boss, but if you fight it at the earliest time possible, its definitely a clear-cut TOB. Julian's Prototype Sectopod doesn't have Wrath Cannon, but it DOES have 100 HP and 3 armor. Why does this make it a That One Boss? Because if you take it on ASAP, you're using Ballistics (averaging at 4 damage) by this point. This comes AFTER 2 MarathonLevels that can be accurately summed up as: Elevator. Now. FuckingRobotseverywhere.

Shining Force has the Marionette, at the Circus in Rindo. It has 35 HP (at a point where your characters probably have around 15-20), a spell that can kill pretty much any of your characters in one shot (and, if you're not careful with how you arrange your characters, more than one in one turn) with more than enough MP to kill off your party, a high defense, and it automatically regains about a quarter of its max HP every round. If you don't know what you're doing, it will defeat you easily. Even if you do, be prepared to revive a lot of characters after the battle.

And if you thought that was bad, wait until you meet Mishaela. Take the Marionette, up its stats to match the party's growth in the interim, and replace the Freeze spell with a Bolt spell that has an even larger area of effect and still does enough damage to kill all but the highest-HP characters. Oh, and also up the difficulty and number of the minions from "noticeable but not a big deal unless you're under-leveled" to "holy crap, that hurt!"

Despite only having one magic skill, Kane manages to hold his own through his incredible offensive and defensive abilities. Replaying battles for experience is generally not required before or after, but Kane will easily mow down an unsuspecting team in one or two hits each while taking mere scratch damage from all but your strongest attacks. And he's not alone, waiting in a close-knit group with a few of the resident Elite Mooks. Kane's sole weakness is his complete lack of magic resistance, but he covers it by filling the battle beforehand with Golems to exhaust your offensive magic beforehand, if he doesn't just rush your casters as soon as they get in range. If all that wasn't bad enough, his final trick is to use the sword he holds to cast Desoul on one person, nearly always killing them.

Shining ForceSword Of Hajya is generally harder than both of the genesis S Fs, but one boss near the end is downright obnoxious. High health, good stats, but that's not the worst of it. He can cast Freeze 3, a massive AOE spell, which if it worked as programmed would bé formidable enough, but due to it being glitched (and that glitch not being fixed in the 3ds eshop version) the spell deals about twice as much damage as its supposed to, making it strong enough to potentially one shot the hero. His high health means he'll be able to use it several times in one fight, and the chapter is filled with formidable enemies, including 2 Demonic Spiders able to use the same obnoxious spell. And they will try to go for the hero if they can. Fortunately they have a fixation of warriors, but this is still going to be a battle where a lot of people will die.

The Leukon Knight, fought halfway through both the Hunters' and Arkz' stories, alternates between immunity to physical attacks and immunity to techniques at the end of his turn, so you're at a disadvantage if you've got a deck with no techniques. His AP and TP switch every turn as well, meaning that he can do lots of damage even without Action Cards. To top it all off, he can play special cards that instantly destroy your Items/Creatures or mess up their attributes.

The Hunters' final boss, Pollux has an AP score that increases every turn, meaning the longer the battle takes place, the more damage she does. She will also shrug off any attacks that give less that 4 damage, so you'd better bring your big guns and pray she doesn't use her Defense cards. But Wait, There's More!! After the eighth turn, she gains the Pierce ability, meaning that she doesn't have to destroy your Items in order to give you the full brunt of her steadily increasing AP!

The Arkz don't get off easy either: they get Castor, who gives her opponents 1 damage every time she kills one of their Creatures (Arkz Story Characters don't take damage whenever their Creatures are killed except if they have the Unfilial attribute). And she doesn't spend any Attack Points to move, so she can get into attack range with ease. Not that she really needs to with her special cards that let her attack from the other side of the map. One of them multiplies the damage by 1.5 times a dice roll, just to twist the knife. The fact that she takes 1 damage every turn as long as she's above 10 HP is cold comfort in the face of all that.

And last, but certainly not least, is Amplum Umbra, AKA The Germ. The true final boss of the game, it is exempt from the eight-point limit of summoned Creatures, so you can have up to four powerful six-to-seven point monsters breathing down your neck. It also has the Rampage ability, meaning that if you're a Hunter, it'll do 4 damage to all your items, and broken Items mean one less HP keeping you from losing. If you're lucky, it'll use Meteor, which reduces both your Items/Creatures and its Creatures to 1 HP so you can easily kill its monsters. But don't let your guard down; for if it has 5 or less HP at the beginning of its turn, it gets half its HP restored, negating the progress you made in beating it. And the cherry on top? If you lose to Amplum Umbra, you have to start over from Castor or Pollux.

In Operation Darkness, Hitler of all people is that one boss. He has MULTIPLE high level flunkies with him, a heal spell that he uses QUITE often that heals 50% of HP, a powerful area spell, a spell that pretty much wastes a character in one shot, he gets SEVERAL turns to your one, and just to top it all off When you FINALLY kill him he's revived with FULL health AND he summons a GIANT DRAGON. As if you didn't have enough of a reason to take glee in launching a bazooka shell into his face!

While Jagged Alliance 2 normally is pretty manageable throughout, the fan-made mod, v1.13 includes the Drassen Counterattack. This is a wave of 40+ soldiers, with maybe 10 or 20 elites among them, swarming at Drassen the second you take control of it. Keep in mind that at most you'll probably have 2-3 mercenaries protecting each sector of the town since they don't always attack the same sector, and you have barely enough time to train 1 squad of regular militia per pair of Teacher mercs you have. It's easily the toughest section in the game, the reward being that if you set the enemies to drop all items, it will most likely give you an excellent boost in terms of equipment. Technically editing the INI file with the included editor can stop the counterattack from happening, but it's included as a default ON and there's no way in-game to stop it.

There is a way to prevent it if you're willing to be inconvenienced by long travel times. Take only the north and south thirds of Drassen, aka the north square (sector) which has the airport (absolutely critical) and the south sector which has the mine (critical as your main source of income in the beginning, less so later on if you can capture other mines); the attack only occurs if you hold all three sectors. Unfortunately, to leave Drassen in this state means that any movement between the two sectors will take in-game hours, instead of ten minutes in-game.

Yggdra Union features Gulcasa, the aptly named Emperor of Carnage. He combines ludicrous stats from the point in the game that you first meet him with a special ability that not only makes him even MORE powerful but prevents you from casting you own special abilities as well. Expect him to tear through your entire army Union like it was made out of wet tissue. The only way to give yourself a fighting chance is to inflict a Curse on him, which lowers his stats.

Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume: despite being the Final Boss of A-Path, Gram easily qualifies. While the other late-game and final bosses are merely very hard fights, Gram simply does not fight fair. To even get to him you have to go through six Pale Flames. The Pale Flames are spellcasting enemies with three attacks per turn AND a Great Magic spell. Other enemy spellcasters only get one attack per turn, and only get Great Magic if they're bosses or end-game mooks. Once you engage Gram, you find out that the usual 4-on-1 tactic that dominates the rest of the game won't work— his counterattack hits every attacker and will kill them all barring a lucky Survival activation. So attacking with your whole party at once means a Total Party Kill on the counterattack. And if you try to whittle him down slowly with 3-on-1 attacks while keeping a healer out of his attack range, you get a nasty surprise in the form of a Heal spell that restores him fully when he hits 50% health. While winnable, the fight can literally take 2 hours of carefully planned maneuvers— longer if you're not lucky. By this standard, the B-Path Final Boss throwing out 40-hit combos twice per turn seems pretty reasonable.

The C-Path Final Boss, Lenneth Valkyrie, can also be like this if you've sacrificed too many comrades, since she summons them to fight by her side in the battle. If you kept at least three strong allies, she's not overly difficult, but if you went crazy with the Destiny Plume, you can conceivably wind up facing a 10-to-1 battle. (Honestly, though, if you sacrificed so many that you don't have a full party anymore, you have bigger problems.)

Nearly any mission with a rescue objective is a pain, but the absolute worst is the one at the end of Chapter 4, B-Path. It comes right after another battle with no save point in between, and the NPCs you have to keep alive are clear across the battlefield. Diagonally. Plus, while one of them puts up a hard fight, the other is a weak archer with feet nailed to the ground who will die in two turns if you don't get there in time. Without Dashes or Provokes (admittedly both very common skills) it is flat out impossible to win the battle. Even if you make it in time, you still have to deal with the enemies as usual, including a punishing Iron Golem. And your reward for success? The NPCs you were protecting die anyway.

The Europa Universalis series, which simulate Europe from (varying from game to game) the 1400s to 1820s, has two in the grand campaign. In the first two games, it's typically Austria which, thanks to scripted events that let it insta-inherit Hungary and Bohemia, will basically take over all of Europe unless you devote yourself to its destruction. In Europa Universalis III, it is most definitely France. France has a large economic base with a large population, which lets them support a huge army to start with. To make matters worse, they also pick National Ideas that make their armies superior. And as icing on the cake, the only country that has a chance at stopping them at the start, Castile, always plays buddy-buddy with them... even when France is busy taking over everything that ISN'T Castile in Spain. Very, VERY frustrating. Worst of all, if you can beat France, odds are this has given Austria the opening IT needs to take its title back.

Asian countries have to deal with the advanced (as in: Europe doesn't even get it for 50 or so years) starting government, ungodly manpower, full centralization and production revenue that is Ming Dynasty China. So do Indian countries, because nothing short of divine intervention can keep the Chinese from steamrolling through Central Asia and and all the way through to the Ottomans, who they usually beat. To make matters worse, weakening them significantly will allow Japan to become the dominant power, and Japan can declare war on any other country without stability hits and actually takes military national ideas.

Scenario 12 of Warsong (North American release of Langrisser 1) is the Two Towers, wherein you fight Emperor Python. It's a forced arrangement, your commanders are split into two groups, and you're up against powerful enemy units such a Lords, Archmages, and Grand Knights that will make mincemeat out of your characters if you have not leveled up properly and your commander is not able to hire the correct troops to counter theirs. It doesn't help that a lot of your weaker defensive commanders are surrounded by commanders with archer units. On top of that, two commanders, the Lord guarding the hall connecting the two towers and Python himself, get the extremely powerful Royal Soldier troop. Unless you've played through this scenario a couple of times, you'll be lucky to get out with more than just Garrett alive (once a commander dies, they're dead for the duration of the game), and if he's not on his 3rd class (both of which still have lower stats than Python), you'll either be starting the game over for the beginning or abusing cheat codes to replay earlier scenarios. Oddly enough, the scenarios that follow this once are considerably easier.

Heroes of Might and Magic V: In Tribes of the East, the final battle for the orcs. Not only are you forced use the weaker of the two heroes, the enemy uses the orcs Achilles' Heel, dark magic. Even if Kujin has Shatter Dark, the constant flow of Frenzy spells will wreak havoc on Kujins rather unimpressive army, unless that same spell works in your favor (Frenzy simply makes the target attack a random nearby stack). Every other significant battle in the final mission, even the last one, pale in comparison.

The second orc mission can qualify as well, depending on your luck. Even though there are no siege battles and all orc towns on the map join you when you approach them, if you are unlucky, the AI will constantly assault your second town from a one-way portal with armies far outnumbering your weekly growth, rapidly thinning your troops and maybe even forcing you to garrison your main hero in that town.

Hide 'n' Seek Battle Monster Tactics has a potential one in Trinchula, the first Target Monster of B5. It is highly resistant to every element except fire. Since Kevin can have only onefire technique at all at the time, it is virtually required to have Kaen on your battle team, which is made unpleasant by the fact that there are two wind monsters just waiting to take down your only character with a constant chance of dealing decent damage to Trinchula. What's worse is that fire doesn't do heavy damage to anything else that is particularly dangerous, which combined with Kaen mainly having melee attacks and this being a game revolving around hiding and seeking does not bode well with the poor girl's usability in the first place. Unfortunately, if you don't have the character sufficiently leveled up (elemental multiplier includes the enemy's defense in this game, which means it won't help much at all with insufficient attack) and on your team, have fun dealing single digit damage to this triple digit HP pain.

First time players of the doujin game Battle Moon Wars will probably tear their hair out in frustration when they face off against Emiya Kirigitsu, Irisviel von Einzbern, Sella and Leysritt who are all besides each other in a row. Between them and your team are hordes of enemies, most of whom have a defense support (the bosses even get FOUR of it) which, unless you're not a perfectionist and do not want to get Saber Lily and Magical Amber, makes things harder to kill. Oh, and you also get one Spoony Bard of an ally who cannot die under any circumstances or else it's Game Over. (Fortunately, you can just let him sit at the back with no problems, but he's still a waste of space.)

Sid Meier's Pirates!! has a nasty one in Marquis de Moltalban. First of all, you have to hunt him all over the Carribbean, and he usually favors ports on the ass end of the map, like Vera Cruz or St. Augustine. You find him, and he is sailing a tricked out War Galleon with full crew and all upgrades. THEN, you have to fight him, and he remains wicked fast and skilled - age slows YOU down, but not the guy who was already white-haired when your character was but a lad. After having to fight him four times for the map to his hideout (which is usually in Nicaragua, far away from any ports to refuel or other plunder to keep your crew happy), you have to put you and your crew against his mercs in land combat. then, you have one more go at him before you take him down for good.

Blackbeard is a Combat Pragmatist— or less diplomatically, a DIRTY ROTTEN CHEATER. He lights his namesake beard on fire before the battle, producing graphical effects that slow down the game and cause Interface Screw. For what it's worth, the real Blackbeard also did this, but for a different reason: to terrify his enemies by looking like he came straight from Hell.

Mentioning Midas in Record Of Agarest War will make people scream in frustration as to how hard he really is. Even if you bought the Downloadable Content, he's still pretty hard. He could really qualify for a Wake-Up Call Boss if it weren't for the fact that he's one of the bosses of the third generation, but this is the boss where you really need to think of strategy. Not only is his Phoenix Strike a One-Hit Kill, he can hit people at two squares apart, and he can regenerate 1/4 of his health per turn.

Eternal Poison has Ignis. First of all, getting him to appear in the first place is a right pain— you have to capture one of each of the four types of Majin on the map. For those unfamiliar, capturing a Majin requires you, on its killing blow, to deal a set number of damage above what was needed to kill it. This Binds it, which leaves it immobile and ready for capture. Sounds easy enough, right? WRONG! Not when the Nightwalkers can snipe you from 5 spaces away with a third-level Malus spell. Or when the Armatuses can eliminate your fighters' ability to attack whatsoever by inflicting Fear. And especially not when the Acridas beat you down with their ludicrous physical attack strength whilst inflicting Sleep so it can destroy your fighters more. Hopefully you have a fighter who's good with Strike attacks, or else you're going to have a right old time with the Zyr Phantasms, who besides taking two people to capture in the first place, resist to varying degrees ALL MAGIC.

Once you've suffered through the above terror, Ignis graces you with his presence. Bosses in this game have these things called Demon Auras, which are specific requirements that have to be met before you can damage them— for instance, Terranus, the boss who precedes Ignis, requires a combo attack to be performed on him before your fighters can all hurt him. Now, Ignis's Demon Aura is that you have to hit him with a Pierce, Strike, and Slash attack before he can be hurt. That's all well and good, but it's entirely possible— and likely— that the player is fighting Ignis as Ashley, who has no storyline characters who attack with Slash. The only hope in this case is to have a mercenary with Slash— and that they don't die before they get to Ignis. Ignis has backup in the form of Pyromotes, which can snipe you with insanely powerful Pyro magic, and the Exo Machina, which can Fracture you, heavily decreasing your stats. And of course Ignis himself has bucketloads of Fire magic himself FOUR spells of it in total, including an area-of-effect spell. He's also only weak to Water and has a whopping 570 HP. And, of course, God help you if you want to capture him— you're gonna need to do 180 extra damage on the killing blow, and have two people left alive to capture him with. And those Pyromotes and Heeflers with him? Pyromote can bring Bound Majin back with half HP, and as an AI priority Heeflers KILL Bound Majin, preventing you from capturing Ignis.

Ymir the Norse Titan from Age of Mythology: The Titans campaign. You have to stop the him from destroying the villages on his way to your base, but this is difficult because he can easily kill your soldiers and he sends enemies to attack your base many times throughout the mission, which makes it very annoying to split your army between stopping Ymir and defending your base. Folstag can stun him with his breath, but even so, Ymir makes the mission quite challenging.

Clone Shunsui Kyoraku in Bleach: The 3rd Phantom. The other members of this batch of clone captains aren't so bad (with the possible exception of Byakuya's clone) but Shunsui is vicious. He can do support attacks with the other clones, and he can destroy weaker characters in just a few hits. Add to this the highly annoying Absolute Defense skill he sports, which gives him a rather high chance to reduce any damage done to him to 10 or less, when he has over 1000 HP to start with.

The final boss, Hollow Seigen, also deserves mention. Just getting to him is a pain, as he can spawn All-elemental (bypassing the Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors aspect of the game and just making it so that they get extra attacks every time) tentacles which each have 2000+ HP. They don't do too much damage, but they're a nuisance nonetheless. Hollow Seigen also has some kind of lightning cannon that takes up three columns and the entire horizontal length of the battlefield and inflicts Shock, which disables your character's skills temporarily. The boss even has an aura that makes it so that your characters get Shocked just by being near it, which makes it a pain to try and heal in between attacking it, due to the arbitrary 10-item limit on inventory. Once you actually get to fighting it, you'll find that it has nearly 10000 HP, hits like a truck with its attacks (which can also (surprise!) inflict Shock if you somehow got up to that point without being Shocked), and is also All-elemental so it always gets an extra turn. Utilizing Co-Op attacks makes the fight go by a little quicker, but it still takes a very long time to bring down.

The Final Boss of Disgaea Dimension 2, Xenolith. For the most part, simply doing a little bit of easy Level Grinding is enough to get through the main story of any Disgaea game, and the final bosses tend to be reasonably easy due to lacking anything to deal with such a strategy. This is not the case with Xenolith, who's ability involves draining 3% of the base stats of every unit within 10 spaces of him, increasing by 3% for every space closer to him. That's right, not even being level 9999 can guarantee a victory against an endlessly lower level boss. While leveling up a weapon can be useful, as he doesn't drain stats provided by weapons and armor, he's still tough because he can move around the map quickly, can pass through units so that he can't be surrounded and trapped, and has a long range, widespread, hard hitting special attack. On top of this, his HP is obscene. If you've simply been going along with the story and never stopping to level grind, than no matter what combination of spells, attacks, skills, or even characters you use, Xenolith will never die in less than ten turns. As you've read before, he can do a lot with ten turns.

Project X Zone has Meden Traore. Granted he's the Final Boss but Meden just takes the icing on the cake. On Normal Mode (first playthrough), he's got 200k HP, regenerates his Cross Point gauge faster than you can which guarantees that his counter attack is going to be his Limit Break, a really wide attack range to attack anyone from where he's at, hits like a truck (as in from full HP to almost death state even with a defense buff) and when you get to him, you can only attack either in front of him, or have a unit that is capable of attacking an extra square away (aka your ranged units). Oh and did you get him to 1/4 of his health left? The guy then summons a lot of Mooks to join him. Said Mooks? It's the sub-bosses you just killed awhile ago before getting to him. (fortunately, you can skip killing them because the mission objective states you just kill him and those are more for intimidation purposes). Though if you're a completionist and want to kill everybody, prep yourself to get pot shots from the boss and pray he doesn't get a 100% Cross Point gauge on his turn. When you think you're safe, you'll be attacked by a Limit Break from a sub-boss each. You're in one hell for a ride.

In Brave New World, some bosses can turn into this since almost all of them have some sort of unique property that's generally a pain to deal with, especially if players fight them in challenge stages:

Azure Kite deals counter damage depending on the amount of damage dealt to him, which thankfully cannot defeat Pair Units, but will almost invariably drop their HP to 1.

Nemesis has large chunks of Regenerating Health between turns, making a fight against it difficult if players can't take it down in a single turn.

Sigma drains all Cross Points after attacking him, forcing players to finish their turn with a Limit Break, even if they'd rather save it for something else other than Sigma if they don't want to lose all of it.

Players of the second Master of Orion game will groan in agony once they realize that the Psilons are in their game. Every other faction can only research one specific part of type of technology, and have to trade for the rest. The Psilons however, research ALL OF THEM AT ONCE. When they are controlled by the AI, the also receive a massive boost to their research speed. If they are left unchecked, they will take over half the map, and late game, can take down an alliance of every other faction nearly effortlessly. If you encounter the Psilons, KILL THEM IMMEDIATELY.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy